Quotes of the day

posted at 8:41 pm on May 17, 2013 by Allahpundit

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration’s credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don’t look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He’s shocked, it’s unacceptable, he’ll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you…

What happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position’s powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.

***

The president derided “tea baggers.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having “failed to address” the “problem” of groups that were “improperly engaged” in campaigns. Because guess who controls that “independent” agency’s budget?

Imagine for a moment if black civil-rights organizations, gay groups, or teachers’ unions loudly complained to members of Congress and the press that the IRS was discriminating against them. How long would it take for the White House to investigate? Answer honestly: Minutes? Hours? Okay, maybe days if there was an attack on one of our embassies that the administration was busy ignoring. Obviously, it would take longer for Obama to actually get to the bottom of the accusations and, if they’re true, punish those responsible. But you can be sure that the moment he heard credible allegations of political persecution of liberal groups — outfits with “progressive” or “civil rights” in their names — he would have moved heaven and earth to make things right.

But when such allegations came from the right, the response from the president — and from a press corps that until recently acted like a king’s guard — ranged from smirks and eye-rolling to flat-out lies and virtual applause…

He’s made it clear that people who disagree with him are fevered, illegitimate, weird, creepy, dangerous, stupid, confused, ignorant, or some other adjective you might assign to a revamped version of the Seven Dwarfs. He’s explained that he doesn’t mind “cleaning up after” Republicans but he doesn’t want to hear “a lot of talking” from them. The time for democratic debate is always behind us with an administration that began with the mission not to let a crisis go to waste, for as Obama said in his second inaugural address, “Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.”…

The recent spate of Washington scandals has some liberals finally confessing in public what many of them have said privately for a long time. The Obama administration is arrogant, insular, prone to intimidation of adversaries, and slovenly when it comes to seeing that rules are followed. Indeed, the Obama White House is a strange place, and it’s good that its operational model is now likely to be finally dissected by the media…

But it was Chris Matthews of MSNBC who cut even deeper in his Hardball show on Wednesday. A former speechwriter for President Carter, he wondered if Obama “really doesn’t want to be responsible day-to-day for running” the government. He savaged the White House for using “weird, spooky language” about “the building leadership” that must approve the Benghazi talking points. “I don’t understand the model of this administration: weak chiefs of staff afraid of other people in the White House. Some undisclosed role for Valerie Jarrett. Unclear, a lot of floating power in the White House, but no clear line of authority. I’ve talked to people who’ve been chief of staff. They were never allowed to fire anybody, so they weren’t really chief of staff.”…

Obama says: Trust me, I do not advocate universal preschool simply to swell the ranks of unionized, dues-paying, Democrat-funding teachers. Trust me, I know something not known by the social scientists who say the benefits of such preschool are small and evanescent.

Obama says: Trust me, the science of global warming is settled. And trust me that, although my plans to combat global warming, whenever the inexplicable 16-year pause of it ends, would vastly expand government’s regulatory powers, as chief executive I guarantee that these powers will be used justly.

Obama says: Trust me. Although I am head of the executive branch, I am not responsible for the IRS portion of this branch…

Because Obama’s entire agenda involves enlarging government’s role in allocating wealth and opportunity, the agenda now depends on persuading Americans to trust him, not their lying eyes. In the fourth month of his second term, it is already too late for that.

***

That ubiquitous scrutiny makes it even more important that a president remain resolute and clear-eyed about his mission. It is critical that he look bigger than his critics. And, as is always the case in politics, that he project optimism about his leadership.

It is in that regard that Obama has faltered in the days since the story of the misdeeds at the IRS broke, cranking up the political and media intensity. One can argue whether the White House was too slow to respond and stanch the bleeding. In some ways, that is a question for lawyers, who can debate how cautious a president must be in responding to such allegations. But it is hard to disagree that this president has lost his footing in the way he presents himself…

But a successful president has to appear in control of events, or at least on top of them. If people think their president has lost that control, they get frightened. And if Obama lets that perception take hold, he may look back on this week with a deep regret, and perhaps an abiding sense of a moment lost.

***

The investigations and recriminations pose a double threat to a presidency already in jeopardy of irrelevance. Not only does the president suffer when he loses control of the metanarrative that determines the assumptions behind media coverage of his administration. He also suffers by looking passive, aloof, and academic. Lately the top officials of the executive branch have seemed always to be in another room, on another call. Hillary Clinton says she was not aware of cables warning of lax security in Benghazi. Eric Holder says he is not sure when he recused himself from the investigation into the AP leak, or if he told the White House, or, really, of anything. Obama says he learned about the IRS IG investigation from the news. He says the Benghazi talking points were a matter of dispute between State and CIA, not the White House. A Martian reading the statements of senior officials on subjects of public controversy would conclude that the U.S. government operates at the whims of midlevel career personnel. But why pick on Martians. Chris Matthews concludes the same thing: “The steering wheel doesn’t control the car anymore.”

The president, however, isn’t even in the car. He is a bystander, a commenter on the passing scene. He moves only when compelled by outside forces. Domestic policy was ceded to Congress during the first half of his term. Only after Scott Brown’s upset in 2010 did Obama take a lead part in passing his health care law. The threat of American default forced him into botched negotiations with John Boehner on the debt ceiling. His tax increases on the wealthy came about only because the entirety of the Bush tax rates were set to expire on Jan. 1, 2013, anyway. On foreign policy he was pulled kicking and screaming into Libya, joining the British and French in overthrowing Qaddafi only when it became clear they were prepared to go to war without him. The Syrian civil war has raged for years, 90,000 have died, as the president does what little he can to convince the Russians to abandon Assad. When natural or man-made disasters strike Americans, he acts, but not before. He is a reactive president, whom only Reinhold Niebuhr could love.

One of his sympathizers describes him, favorably, as “Barack the Buck-Passer.” And pass bucks he has, trillions of them in fact, mostly in the direction of the American people and obstructionist Republicans. Still, Obama’s supporters must recognize, one can only buck-pass for so long. There comes a reckoning of accounts. Have we finally reached that moment, in the confluence of the Benghazi and IRS and AP stories, when Obama no longer will be able to blame his predecessor and adversaries for his own failings?

***

We clearly have a values problem in the federal government. We clearly have a few or many agencies where the leaders don’t emphasize that workers need to check themselves, or risk losing what remains of the people’s trust.

The rest of us just have to be more wary. For example, I generally support the little behavioral nudges that Cass Sunstein describes in his outstanding book “Simpler” — the subtle policy shifts that induce people to save more, or eat healthier. I’d trust somebody with a minimalist disposition like Sunstein to implement these policies. But I wouldn’t necessarily trust the people at the I.R.S. or Justice Department to implement them. They’d take a nudge and expand it into a shove.

And what are we to make of financial regulatory reform and the new health care law? In a culture of unrestraint, will federal regulators use these rule-writing opportunities to expand their reach beyond anything now imagined?

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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I looked like Belinda Carlyle from the Go Go’s in HS. Except not chunky.

bazil9 on May 17, 2013 at 9:50 PM

Yummy! :)

I just turned 40..
I resembled her in HS…when she was a Go Go.
Do the math. :)
Unless you find her repulsive. :)

bazil9 on May 17, 2013 at 11:36 PM

I used to like a waitress named Mickey in the early ’90s, who looked like Belinda but was better looking (she knew it, too, and really knew how to use her appeal – guys went gaga over her!)

Of course, everytime I saw her I’d start singing “Mickey” to her! She loved that, and me…however, I ended up sexually frustrating her because I wasn’t physically aggressive/expressive enough for her (I had a good excuse for that – although she was unhappily dating one of my best friends, I was hesitant to act because I’m a true gentleman… :))

7. Provide details of all other training you have received. Provide copies of the training material.

The Hawaii Tea Party, based in Maui, was audited in 2011. But despite the IRS’ inquiries, Nonaka said he had only limited interaction with the group.

“I think I did one training with [the Hawaii Tea Party] through the Leadership Institute, when the Leadership Institute came to Hawaii,” Nonaka told The DC.”I was never a member of the Hawaii Tea Party. I was never involved with them.”

Meanwhile, also in 2011, the Leadership Institute was under the IRS’ microscope.

“Our audit began June 1, 2011,” Leadership Institute spokeswoman Abigail Alger told TheDC. “We were asked for additional documentation in February 2012″ — just 19 days after the Hawaii Tea Party was asked for additional information.

“The Baltimore office asked for copies of our training material,” Alger said. “The questions ranged from turning over the content of our 2008 training materials, to giving them all the information on our 2008 interns. These were just college kids, but they asked who our 2008 interns went on to work for.”

“In May, the IRS had an internal workshop. Our audit was closed July of that year, with no evidence of wrongdoing,” Alger said. “By that point, we had spent $50,000 in legal fees.”

The Hawaii Tea Party was also cleared of wrongdoing by the Cincinnati office.

Focus? I was thinking of another word, but with almost identical phonetics, but ban worthy.

Coffee-thirty at HA, good morning from the hot and humid hills of Cen. Tx.

hillsoftx on May 18, 2013 at 7:49 AM

The same sort of laser-like focus on jobs: he destroyed them and the economy has been on the brink of collapse with all the additional federal spending and regulations, plus the size and intrusiveness of it.

He wants to do the SAME THING to the middle class.

As Insty refrains: ‘They’ll turn us into beggars because they’re easier to please.’

Unskilled and low-skilled immigrants are, and always have been, natural constituents of the Democrats. And their more highly skilled, and even affluent, descendants tend to remain Democrats. Heck, fourth generation Jewish Americans vote even more heavily for Democrats than fourth generation Hispanics.

Republicans are deluding themselves when they attribute Hispanic voting patterns to the issue of immigration — the numbers don’t support that argument. They are also deluding themselves when they claim that the Hispanic population that has voted so overwhelmingly Democratic for decades can be won over in the foreseeable future by a Republican Party that favors limited government…”

Could the reasonable person presume Romney would have gotten a 2% swing if Americans would have been informed in a timely fashion of the IRS and Benghazi details–details known then that we are just discovering now? Clearly, if the AP story would have broke, they would have blown up the 2012 election. Mind-boggling what could have been.

” Eliana Johnson points out that the director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which oversees the determination of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations.

Liberal Democrats comprise the vast majority of federal bureaucrats. For example, in the past two presidential races, roughly 85 percent of the money contributed to a candidate by IRS employees went to Barack Obama.

This is consistent with what I observe here in the Washington, D.C. area. I estimate the percentage of bureaucrats to be at least 85. And most federal bureaucrats I know hate conservatives as a class (but not me, I hope).
That’s one reason why, as I wrote the other day, conservatives should never support legislation that empowers the federal government to promote liberalism. Any constraints written into such legislation are likely to be ignored by the bureaucrats who administer the law.

And conservatives should begin adhering to this rule by rejecting the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill…”

Could the reasonable person presume Romney would have gotten a 2% swing if Americans would have been informed in a timely fashion of the IRS and Benghazi details–details known then that we are just discovering now? Clearly, if the AP story would have broke, they would have blown up the 2012 election. Mind-boggling what could have been.

” Last week, Lois Lerner, head of the tax exempt division of the Internal Revenue Service dropped a bombshell: The IRS had been applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups claiming tax exempt status.

The revelation came seemingly out of the blue, in response to a question during a panel at an American Bar Association conference, leaving the audience baffled, according to reports.

As it turns out, it was not a spontaneous revelation. The question, said outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, was planted, as part of a prepared strategy for the IRS to release this information to the public.

Under questioning from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, Miller said it was a “prepared Q and A,” and the question, which came from tax lawyer Celia Roady had been discussed in advance as well.

Roady told U.S. News and World Report later Friday afternoon that Lerner had personally contacted her and requested she ask the specific question. Roady said she did not know at the time what Lerner’s answer would be.*

Later, Miller, questioned by Rep. Peter Roskam, explained that the disclosure had been made to coincide with the conclusion of the inspector general’s report…”

We reject the bill, but that doesn’t much matter to Congress. If they want it, they’re going to have it. Obama wants it, too, so we have no real recourse long as this crap thing is passed under the law that is the Constitution.

More-Conservative Republicans aren’t just fighting the Democrats. Their own Party opposes them, almost to the point they’re a third political party.

The IRS did an excellent job of stifling the formation of TEA groups, and I find it more infuriating that Senators like Schumer pressed the agency to do it. It’s an insult to our parents who fought WWII, and it’s an insult to my generation who served (I’m pushing 55), and it’s an insult to our children who serve now.

I’m sure this has been brought up, but if not, in addition to the scrutiny and delay conservative groups had in attempting to gain tax exempt status and the unethical and probably illegal selection of conservatives for audits, all of them incurred additional expenses, sometimes in the tens of thousands of $$$, in documenting their application or defending their tax return. These were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars that were diverted from promoting conservative ideas. Don’t think for a minute that some enterprising, liberal IRS agent(s) didn’t think: “let’s audit these conservatives and teach them a lesson, all the while making them spend $$$ that they could be using to oppose ‘The Anointed One’.”

“Issa Issues Subpoena To Amb. Thomas Pickering, Co-Chair Of ARB, To Be Questioned About Findings On Benghazi…

He better have a darn good explanation for why they didn’t talk to either Clinton, Greg Hicks or some of the other important people on the case. He previously said he didn’t interview Clinton because “we knew where responsibility lay”. Huh? – Nickarama

via cbs…

The chairman of the House Oversight committee has issued a subpoena to compel the co-chairman of the independent review board that investigated last year’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, to answer questions about its findings in closed session.

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa issued the subpoena on Friday to retired veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering to force him to appear at a deposition next Thursday.

Pickering has offered to testify before Issa’s committee in public, but Issa said a closed-door meeting is needed first.

Issa is one of several GOP lawmakers who have suggested the Obama administration is trying to cover up the circumstances and aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the Benghazi outpost that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans…”

At the DC link I posted above one group spent $50,000 in legal fees in their wrangle with the KGB IRS.

But Wait…There’s More!

The KGB IRS also requested back-end access to conservative websites.

“IT GETS WORSE!
The Obama IRS demanded that several Tea Party groups provide back-end access to their websites.

And, from reliable sources: This happened to several Tea Party groups!

The source has this in writing. It states they wanted access to everything the members had access to, which would be chats, email, contact information, etc. The group raised less than $600. She was targeted as early as October 2010.

Central Texas 912 President, Maria Acosta joined Kristina Ribali from FreedomWorks to discuss being singled out by the Feds.

The IRS asked for back-end access to the group’s website.
And this is a tax question?…

UPDATE: The IRS also demanded the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia to provide access to the back-end of their website.
Question 5A: screenshot & pdf at link

5. Provide the following information for your web and internet related activities

a. Copies of your current web pages and your presentations on other web pages such as social networking sites and blog sites (from October 22,2010 to now). If you are a membership organization, please include all the pages that are accessible to your only to your members.

No, what is scary is it IS believable.
There is a segment of our society that does not care about anything except their own agenda.
Not the truth,not the law,not our freedoms,liberty-what is right or wrong.
See HAL for an example.

He stated-paraphrasing’ he doesn’t give a f$$k-
if it is illegal,immoral,unethical,or not constitutional- happy for it and iho all tea party people/cons should be investigated.

Nice!
The only place in Fl I havent been. uper pan handle.
Apalachicola is the furthest I have been up on that side.
I have heard it is lovely. My uncle lived in Destin for a bit, once retired from the military.
Now in TX..with his TX born and bred wife.
he loved it up there.

Fox News sez Ted Cruz eligible for POTUS…which could indicate dumping Senor Rubio…Switch Latino for Tejano as the great hispanic hope?
(Ted Cruz and John Cornyn wrote Xcellent amendments to the Bogus Immigration Bill btw…Cruz has them at his site)

Volcanoes continue to smolder…

Jazz got mugged maybe or he’s eating a big breakfast…cause it’s been a little slow this morning at HA

Jazz got mugged maybe or he’s eating a big breakfast…cause it’s been a little slow this morning at HA

workingclass artist on May 18, 2013 at 10:23 AM

I’ll cut Jazz some slack. He got assigned to write an article on the dreadful Terry McAuliffe. There’s no means or method to make that dull Clintonite anything but boring and a thankless no-hits wonder.

In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections.

This is nothing new for dear leader. He gives a speech to issue a veiled warning just in case there are whistle blowers lurking in the tall weeds. It had been reported that there were some more Benghazi witnesses coming forward, he gave a speech with a veiled warning about bringing people to justice and losing jobs and apparently those witnesses disappeared.

I love their version of this and – yeah 1987 counts as “late 80s to early 90s”……anything after ’85 is “late eighties”, technically and even though they disbanded in 1987 (actually late December of 1987, so it was practically 1988) – underground and non-profit radio stations continued to play their music regularly for a good five years. Not to mention the subsequent efforts of the individual band members after the group disbanded. I remember hearing them a lot on WXRT in Chicago in ’91 and ’92…..it was like they never went away….So – even though they disbanded in late “87 – their “Radio Life” went on for a good five years after that…..